Dardedel

by Manoucher Parvin

  Their separate voices joining into one voice,

  Like lyric and melody dovetailing.

  Together they finish the verses that Hafez had begun:

  “Come, my beloved,

  Let us go forth into the field.

  Let us lodge in the villages.

  Let us get up early to the vineyards.

  Let us see if the grapes flourish,

  Whether the tender grape appear,

  And the pomegranates bud forth.

  There I will give thee my loves.”

  There is no silence now.

  There is no uncertainty or perplexment.

  There is only long and tender applause,

  The sour poets of Manhattan tamed at last.

  “Mitra! I am so surprised!” sings Hafez to Mitra,

  As he leads her to their table by the kitchen door.

  “Your mother said you couldn’t come with me,

  Yet here you are! How is this, Mitra Jaan?”

  Mitra shrugs and smiles:

  “She said I couldn’t come to the slam with you,

  But she didn’t say I couldn’t come to the slam with me.”

  Hafez cocks his head suspiciously, the way wise roosters do.

  “Mitra Jaan, I wasn’t born yesterday.

  Tell me the truth, did you sneak out?”

  Again Mitra shrugs: “How can I sneak out,

  If my mother is not home to catch me?

  If she is away on one of her business trips,

  Minding other people’s business,

  And not the business of her own child?”

  “That sounds like sneaking out to me,” Rumi says flatly.

  Mitra is worried: “You aren’t going to tell my mother, are you?”

  Rumi erases her fear with a grandfatherly laugh.

  “We will not tell your mother about your disobedience,

  If you don’t tell our mothers about ours!”

  Only Pirooz does not laugh at this.

  His stomach is bubbling with concern.

  Mitra is clearly a fantastic girl,

  But she is still a girl,

  And Hafez, even in his present incarnation,

  Is a grown man, with a growing problem,

  Should he take his love for the girl too far.

  “Do your friends have names?” Mitra asks Hafez.

  Not wanting to give away his own secret,

  Hafez introduces Rumi simply as Jalalad-Din,

  “A good poet who knows the works of Rumi

  As if he wrote them himself—and this is Professor Pirooz,

  Who read an excellent poem about our fuzzy world,

  Just before you arrived.”

  The Dull Professor now introduces a poet

  Who rode on a train all the way from Ohio.

  Hafez, studying the poet’s face and beret,

  Is both amused and astonished:

  “Pirooz, give or take a few gray hairs, that man could be you!”

  Pirooz’s eyes and mind drift from Mitra.

  He immediately nods and immediately frowns.

  “Yes, yes, that is Manoucher,

  A Persian like us, and a scholar like me.

  He taught at Columbia when I first came,

  And despite my best efforts people were forever mixing us up.

  He is something of an imp, I’m afraid.

  I can’t tell you how many times his antics were blamed on me,

  And my good work credited to him!”

  As the poet from Ohio takes the stage, a bird alights on his arm.

  Pirooz whispers, “Look there!

  It is the Poem of Poems, sitting there proudly,

  Just like a pirate’s parrot!

  Do you think anyone sees him but us?”

  “Does anyone see what?” Mitra wonders.

  “There is your answer,” Mowlana whispers back to Pirooz.

  “Now everyone listen to the poet and forget his muse.”

  Manoucher’s voice rises slowly and softly,

  Like the fresh Caspian breezes of his youth.

  His poem is entitled, “Where Have All the Directions Gone?”:

  “Oh, how easy it is to desire truth and

  Journey on and on to seek it.

  But navigation is difficult if the path is uncharted and

  Your destination unknown.

  Navigation is the orchestration of space, of time, of things,

  Of imaginations and intentions,

  A struggle to uproot familiarities,

  To know the unknown and see the unseen.

  Navigation says no to traditions, no to boundaries, no to fate.

  No, no, no to fate!

  “We each choose different routes,

  Even to reach the same destination.

  We mark the North Star,

  We invent compasses, maps, signs, chronometers, and radar.

  We number buildings, name streets.

  Still we ask for directions,

  Whether we are lost or not,

  And we wonder how to navigate and where to navigate,

  Within the jungle of our thoughts

  And the cravings of our hearts,

  Where both destination and direction remain:

  Anonymous, enigmatic, indeterminate, and unresolved.

  We must navigate alone to inadmissible futures,

  Without signs, guides, landmarks, or wisdom provided,

  By our genes, or the gods, or the magic of our times.

  “I know that my destination

  Is not a garden of artificial flowers,

  Is not a graveyard of unfulfilled goals,

  Is not a heaven or a hell or a purgatory

  Silenced of all earthly senses or truths.

  My destination is not death or after death.

  My destination is now, is life itself.

  My destination is the heart and mind of Mankind.

  “I live with the hope that man will navigate to where love is not sin,

  To where shame is gone, where fear is dead,

  Where injustice is abolished and jealously self-devoured,

  Where peace is a grinning rose on War’s deep grave

  Where happiness sails everywhere with the power of a wish.”

  The Dull Professor makes a last call for poets,

  Before the judges judge,

  And the waitresses stack the chairs.

  “Go on, Jalalad-Din,” Hafez urges Rumi,

  “Everyone here has slammed but you!”

  “Yes, please, Jalalad-Din,” begs Pirooz,

  “Consummate your marriage to the modern world,

  And like the virgin bride you are,

  Wear something old and something new,

  Something borrowed and something blue!”

  Rumi drums his fingers on the table,

  Then says, “Well, well, why not!”

  He bumps back his chair and hurries to the stage.

  But when he arrives, he is not the white-bearded Persian he was,

  But a young man, even younger than Hafez,

  His new face wearing every ethnicity,

  Crowned with a baseball cap turned backwards,

  Cloaked in great baggy jeans and a shirt to his knees.

  “What happened to Jalalad-Din?” asks Mitra,

  Trying to find him in the dark, crowded room.

  “Perhaps he has lost his way,” says Hafez quickly.

  “Or his mind,” worries a quivering Pirooz.

  They listen to the young rapper,

  His body and his words bobbing rhythmically:

  “Just maxin’ and relaxin’

  Kickin’ my ballistics

  Rappin’ realistic

  Hip-hoppin’

  Ain’t stoppin’

  Hangin’ in my garden

  Flowers stickin’ through the concrete

  Tickling at my phat feet

  While I’m whirlin’

  And I’m twirling

  While I�
��m doin’ the Sama

  The deep-down cosmic dance

  That the Dervishes do in their pajamas.

  “Don’t dis me

  Don’t dismiss me

  Cause I ain’t comin’ off

  Just to hear myself talk.

  Can’t you see I’m ascending?

  Can’t you see I’m transcending?

  My flesh and my bones

  Moving to a new home

  To the Big MC’s

  Kingdom of Wisdom

  To the fly-far-away world

  Of rhyme and reason

  To the garden of raps

  Where Jesus and Buddha

  Moses and the Dali Lama

  Are doin’ the Sama

  The deep-down cosmic dance

  That the Dervishes do in their pajamas.”

  BOOK THREE:

  Love of All Loves

  11 West Side Stories, East Side Stories

  The sun-sprinkled rain drips off the curbs, trickles into the streets,

  Hums into the treads of spinning tires,

  Soaks into the leather soles of fashionable shoes.

  It is summer again.

  All winter, all spring, Hafez drove Mitra home,

  And each day told her how much he loved her:

  During their stolen moments in Central Park,

  While holding hands in the city’s quiet museums,

  While holding each other inside the telephone’s mystical wires

  Where longings travel beyond the reach of eyes or fingertips.

  Yet while he opened his heart to her,

  Saying to her so many times, “Mitra Jaan, I die for you,”

  He still could not tell her the truth about himself,

  That he is not only a young cabbie named Hafez,

  That this is not his first bumpy ride through mortal life,

  That he is the real Hafez, the poet Hafez,

  The Hafez who lived and who died centuries ago,

  Before there was a New York City,

  Before there were yellow automobiles with magic meters

  That could spin time and space into gold,

  Before there was a young woman with

  Intermingling Persian and American blood,

  Named Mitra.

  Hafez knows he must tell her the truth, and soon,

  Lest their lovers’ dardedel be false and hollow.

  Each day he reminds himself, “Today I will tell her my secret.”

  Yet each day passes with the secret left a secret.

  Each day he warns himself that, “She will fear you,

  Run from you, hide from you, and curse you for your deceit.”

  But now it is summer, and all things are possible in summer,

  When temperatures rise, flowers open, and fruits ripen irresistibly.

  So he will tell her today, perhaps,

  And let his truth test the truth of their love.

  Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow.

  Today is a Saturday, the Saturday after the Saturday that

  Mitra, wearing her white gown and funny flat hat, graduated.

  She had wept and wept, not in joy, but in sadness,

  Because her father was too far away to attend.

  But the week has fled and the tears have dried,

  And now Mitra asks Hafez to meet her at Times Square.

  “I have a secret for you,” she says on the phone.

  Hafez races in his cab, hoping her secret is no worse than his,

  That she will not confess that she is not really Mitra,

  But the incarnated beguiling god of light,

  Who long ago slew the sacred bull and gave life to life,

  And now comes to New York to toy with love.

  Mitra spots him and jumps into the front seat of his cab, saying,

  “I have tickets, Hafez Jaan! Tickets!”

  “And so do I,” laments Hafez, popping his glove compartment.

  “Speeding tickets and parking tickets,

  Tickets for making U’s and tickets for going the wrong way,

  More tickets than I can begin to pay!”

  “My tickets are free,” Mitra says,

  “A gift of guilt from my mother for being on business

  When she should be here for my birthday.

  One of my parents is always missing on special days.

  They take turns disappointing me, then shower me with gifts.

  It is a lucrative but lonely life I live, Hafez Jaan.”

  “Today is your birthday? You should have told me, Mitra Jaan!

  I would have brought you a present!”

  Mitra grins with a trace of wicked enjoyment at the tips of her lips.

  “I hope my being fifteen doesn’t drive you to a younger woman!”

  Hafez grins back, feeling as guilty as her parents.

  What would she think of him if she knew the truth—

  That he is not just five years older than her, but six hundred?

  “What are the tickets for?” he finally asks.

  “For a play!” she says, “A wonderful play

  With wonderful music and dancing!

  My mother said I should take a friend from school,

  And what better friend do I have from school than you?”

  She hugs him, and burns a hole in his cheek with a quick kiss.

  “So we have all day together, and all night if you wish.”

  (The words “all night” send a worldly trembling through Hafez,

  One he has not felt for a long, long time.)

  Hafez calms himself and parks his cab and they run

  To the marquee that reads: WEST SIDE STORY.

  “It is an old play,” Mitra tells him as they shuffle into line,

  “But so good they keep bringing it back.”

  Whispers Hafez: “It is good that good things from the past

  Are allowed now and then to visit the future.”

  Three hours later they are in a coffee shop, chewing on fresh bagels,

  Sipping fruit juice through plastic straws.

  As they talk of the impossible love between Tony and Maria,

  Neither can keep the tears from their eyes.

  “This Bernstein and Sondheim,” says Hafez of the play’s authors,

  “Were great seers to write our story before there was us!

  Who are Tony and Maria but Mitra and Hafez?”

  Mitra wants to cry—But she giggles instead.

  “Actually Tony and Maria are two Italians named Romeo and Juliet,

  Created by an Englishman named Shakespeare, centuries ago.”

  She tells him of Shakespeare’s famous play,

  Of the star-crossed lovers who ended as Tony and Maria ended,

  Because hatred engulfed their families.

  “How is it you have never heard of Romeo and Juliet?” she wonders

  As the sweet juice gurgles up the plastic straw

  Into the pucker between her pink lips.

  Hafez, of course, has never heard of Romeo or Juliet,

  Or this Shakespeare or this Sondheim or this Bernstein.

  For the longest time he was a wandering soul in Heaven,

  And then a star-counting cactus in the desert.

  But he cannot tell Mitra that—that truth is trapped in his secret,

  The secret he must tell, but cannot tell.

  Instead he says: “Actually, Tony and Maria are not Romeo and Juliet.

  They are two lovers named—”

  Angry tears erupt in Mitra’s eyes. “You have already reminded me

  That they are the doomed lovers named Mitra and Hafez!”

  Hafez almost shouts at her:

  “No, Mitra! They are not us! We will never be them!”

  His voice softens and he takes her hand.

  “I am speaking of two lovers named Layla and Majnun!

  How is it that you have never heard of them,

  When you can recite Hafez and Rumi as if

/>   You had once studied at their knees?”

  “I may be graduating three years early,” she teases,

  “But I am only fifteen years old, and only half Persian.

  Tell me about them, Hafez Jaan.”

  And so Hafez does: “The story of Layla and Majnun is very old,

  So old that perhaps Adam and Eve themselves,

  The most famous star-crossed lovers of all time,

  Heard it from a bluebird in the garden of Eden.

  But the version Persians love most

  Was written eight hundred years ago by the poet Nizami,

  When Islam was in full flower, fertilized by Persia’s rich loam.

  Nizami wrote Layla and Majnun at the urging

  Of his patron, Sharvan Shah Akhsitan Manuchehr,

  Who wanted a new retelling of the story.

  Nizami was reluctant—it was already so famous a tale—

  But the shah insisted and so Nizami wrote!

  Mitra Jaan! What a poet was Nizami!

  His invention and imagery are still without equal.”

  “Even better than the poems of Hafez?” asks Mitra.

  Without a blush, Hafez answers:

  “Hafez could not hold a candle to him,

  Though Hafez wished he had lived in Nizami’s time,

  So he could have stood behind him with a candle,

  And studied the great master as he worked.”

  “Enough of Nizami,” says Mitra. “Tell me the story Nizami wrote.”

  And so Hafez begins the story of Layla and Majnun:

  “There once lived in the desert of Arabia a wealthy chieftain,

  Loved for his goodness and wisdom.

  He prayed to God for a son and was given one,

  A handsome boy whom he named Qays.

  Qays was sent to the finest school, where he did his father proud,

  His future looked very bright.

  But then another chieftain sent his daughter to the same school.

  Layla was her name and she was very beautiful,

  As slender as a cypress tree, as graceful as a bird,

  Possessing raven hair and the darting black eyes of a gazelle.

  She looked just like you, Mitra Jaan.

  Except for your blue eyes, of course!

  Anyway, Qays immediately fell in love with her.

  And Layla fell immediately in love with him.

  Even at his tender age Qays claimed her for his own

  And vowed he would love her all his life.

  Poor Qays! His heart and mind were so filled with love

  That he could do nothing but think of Layla.

  When he opened his mouth, only Layla’s name came out.

  You think Tony had it bad for Maria?

  You think Romeo had it bad for Juliet?

  Qays had it as bad for Layla as I have it bad for you, Mitra Jaan!